We have the honour of inviting your lawyers, legal assistants and otherlegal personnel to attend LawTechAsia 2007, a conference on technology andits impact on the legal profession. With the theme " NET EFFECT : Developinga Web-enabled Law Practice", this 2-day conference to be held on February3-4, 2007 at the Holiday Inn Galleria Manila, Pasig City will explore howthe lawyer's use of the internet can enhance his practice, streamline officeprocesses and procedures, and, ultimately, improve the bottom line. Legaland ethical issues inherent in the lawyer's use of the internet will also bediscussed. The conference has been accredited as an MCLE event. Theconference also features an exhibit of IT products and services relevant tothe legal profession.

Speakers include:

* Professor Daniel Seng - Associate Professor of Law, NationalUniversity of Singapore. Prof. Seng will discuss legal and ethical issuesarising from the lawyer's use of the internet.* Atty. Claro V. Parlade - Partner, Parlade, Hildawa, Parlade and EcoLaw Offices. Atty. Parlade will delve into security and confidentialityissues faced by lawyers when using the internet.* Andrew Perry - Director, Legal and Technology- legal.cosult, an ITand law consulting firm based in Sydney, Australia. Andrew will explore theinternet as a practice tool.* Omar F. Abesamis - President, Genesis Komputer Dynamiks, Inc. Omarwill focus on the internet as a marketing tool. He will discuss the elementsthat make for effective, surfer-friendly lawyer websites.

To register for this unique conference, your legal staff can call 683 0284or 910 2559. They can also register online by logging on towww.lawtechasia.com Registration fees areP2,500 for government lawyers and P1,500 for non-lawyer legal staff.

Direct deposit or online funds transfer to the account of Mindbridge EventManagement Services at the Bank of the Philippine Islands, Ortigas- SanMiguel Branch, Pasig City being account no. 3990-0050-19.

To register for this unique conference, please call 683 0284 or fax thisregistration form to 910 2559. You can also register online by logging on towww.lawtechasia.com. Registration fees areP3,000 for lawyers and P1,500 for law students. Attendees are given fullMCLE credits for completing any 3 of the 6 conference sessions.

You’ve worked hard to get here. You’ve sent out 31 resumes, networked, attended job fairs, enrolled in school for more education – you’ve taken all the right steps.

Then, one afternoon the phone rings. “Yes, we’d like you to come in for an interview. Is next Tuesday at 10:00 alright with you?” Alright???!!! You can be there in 10 minutes! But you gather your composure, pretend to rifle through your “appointment book” and calmly reply, “Yes, Tuesday at 10:00 works for me. See you then.” Now what?

The sequence goes like this: the resume gets you an interview; the interview gets you the job. This is when you become more than a bunch of employment dates and workplace accomplishments. This is your opportunity to shine. It’s show time!

Go in cold and you’re working at a disadvantage. You prepped the perfect resume, now it’s time to prep for that all-important interview. Here are ten steps you should take before you show up at the interviewer’s door.

1. Review your resume.

Sure, you know it by heart. But what was it that caught the eye of this recruiter or the HR pro? Specialized experience? Unique training? A steady history of career advancement? Revisit your resume from the point of view of the interviewer. It may provide insight into the company’s employee needs – something that would certainly be advantageous to know going in.

2. Get back on-line.

The Internet served you well in the preparation of personalized cover letters targeted at the recipients’ needs. Okay, visit the company web site again and start taking notes. Corporate officers, the latest press releases, the company’s annual report. Gather as much information as you can on your soon-to-be-employer.

3. Study, study, then cram.

The more you learn about your callback company, the better you’re going to feel walking in that door. Knowledge is power. Knowledge will make you more confident in your attitude and your answers. You know this stuff. You’ve studied it! Knowledge of company products, services, protocols and procedures shows the interviewer that you’re proactive, with an eye for detail and an appreciation for the power of preparation. In other words, you’ll make a positive impression.

4. Rehearse your interview.

How can you rehearse for something that doesn’t have a script? Write one. You know the typical questions you’ll be asked so write down some of your most insightful, witty thoughts regarding the state of your industry and profession. Be prepared to describe past positions, responsibilities and accomplishments. This is not a time for false modesty, so don’t be afraid to highlight your professional strengths and play down your terrible typing skills. Remember: it’s no brag if it’s the truth. Ask your spouse, your child or a friend to play the role of interviewer so you become more comfortable speaking about yourself in front of others. Again, this is a confidence builder. The more you practice, the more confident you’ll be.

5. Develop your list of questions.

Your interview shouldn’t be seen as some type of interrogation. It’s a “getting to know you” meeting, so feel free to ask questions. However, your first question shouldn’t be “How much do I get paid?” or “How’s the 401k plan, here?” Instead, ask questions that show you understand the job and the company’s needs. Be quick to pick up on the interviewer’s comments and ask relevant questions.

Interviewer: We’ve had some issues with field reports coming in late recently.You: How are the reports transmitted?(Oh, you’re good. Very good.)

6. Dress for success.

An interview is a performance with people playing different roles. Your role is successful job prospect. Play the part. Whether you’re female or male, the conservative business suit is the recommended attire for any interview. If your business suit needs a pressing, send it to the dry cleaners. If you don’t own a suit (you’d be surprised at the number of us who don’t) go out and get one. It doesn’t have to be an $800 designer suit, but it should be conservative black, blue or gray.

7. Get cut or coiffed.

You’ll have 15 minutes to make a good impression. Treat yourself to a visit to the local hair stylist. You bet looks matter. They’ll be plenty of time to show your talent once you land the job. For now, look like a success, feel like a success – be a success.

8. Practice positive visualization.

Professional athletes do it. So do actors, yoga instructors and new age thinkers who sleep under makeshift pyramids to absorb that mystical energy. It’s called positive visualization – and it works. It really does. In the days leading up to the interview, picture yourself sitting opposite the head of HR. Picture yourself relaxed, comfortable, at the top of your game. Play that clip over and over in your mind until it becomes so familiar, it actually becomes a part of your self-image. It simply can’t be stated too often – your confidence during an interview should be obvious and genuine.

9. Gather your materials.

The day before the interview, gather your materials and place them in a briefcase or attaché. Don’t have one? Buy one or borrow one. It’s another opportunity to project that professional image you wear so well. Bring extra copies of your resume in a manila envelop. Bring a pad and pencil to take notes. Bring a calculator (you never know). Bring your address book and copies of your business card. If you’ve been asked to provide additional information (school transcripts, e.g.) make sure you’ve got clean copies ready to hand over.

10. Sleep tight.

You’ve done it all. You’ve prepared yourself; you’ve built your confidence so you can look the interviewer straight in the eye. You are ready to rock ‘n’ roll! Okay, too psyched. You’ll never get to sleep. The night before the interview, go to bed early. Have some warm milk, coco or herbal tea (stay away from the 3rd scotch). Relax. Set the alarm and sleep comfortably in the knowledge that you’re as prepared as you’ll ever be. No, not every interview will be a success. You won’t get the job every time – but don’t take it personally. It’s not about you; it’s about the needs of the company. However, you can increase the chances of success by presenting a professional, prepared, and confident you to the interviewer. That’s how you turn an interview into a job offer.

Today is the day you've been waiting for. You are the lucky winner of a secret so small, yet so powerful, it will take your breath away.

Here is a marketing technique that giants in the advertising and direct sales industries have used effectively for decades. Yet, rarely, if ever, have you seen it used in a job-search cover letter–until now.

Ta Da! (Drum roll, please!)

Here’s the greatest cover letter secret ever revealed…

Its 'proper' name is postscript. Its nickname is P.S. Add this little fellow to the end of your next cover letter and watch the phone calls for interviews roll in.

A person cannot not read a P.S. It is so powerful that it practically begs a person to skip down to the bottom and read it first.

Think about it. When you receive a letter with a P.S., don't your eyes move right to it? You're dying to find out what it's all about–whether a special offer, a bit of exciting news, free shipping on a product, a hug or kiss from a friend or loved one.

In marketing and advertising, the purpose of a P.S. is to state again the action you want the reader to take. For a job-seeker, it's a call for an interview. After sharing your qualifications in the letter, the P.S. reminds the reader of what you really want—the opportunity to meet in person to discuss the job. This ‘direct hit’ at the end of the cover letter can lead to that desired result.

THREE ways to use the P.S. in a cover letter

P.S. I'll follow up by phone and e-mail on June 20th. I would love to meet in person to discuss how I can fill the position (insert job title) I applied for. I can be reached right away at 555-555-5555. Thank you in advance.

P.S. I welcome the chance to meet at your convenience. Feel free to call me at 555-555-5555 to schedule an interview regarding (insert job title). I'm available any time you choose.

P.S. I'm eager to talk with you about how I can fill the position you advertised. {insert job opening title here}. {Company name} is number one on my list of organizations I'd like to work for. Contact me directly at 555-555-5555. Thank you for your time.

As you can see, the P.S. is hard to ignore! It's clear and focused and brief.

Tips for using the P.S. (postscript): Position the P.S. at the bottom of your cover letter and justified to the left. I recommend using either bold text or italics. Do not use both.

P.S. People are conditioned to read the P.S. so be sure to include one in your next cover letter.

P.P.S. Remember, the P.S. is our little secret. Share with others at your own risk!

-Jimmy Sweeney

Jimmy Sweeney is the president of CareerJimmy and author of the new, Amazing Cover Letter Creator. Jimmy is also the author of several career related books and writes a monthly article titled, “Job Search Secrets.”

The Blas F. Ople Policy Center and Training Institute, a non-stock, non-profit foundation established in honor of the late senator and foreign affairs secretary will hold a job fair on Feb. 2 at the Central Plaza of Market! Market! mall in Fort Bonifacio, Taguig.

The job fair will bring together under one roof local and overseas Filipino job applicants, employment agencies, and local and foreign employers in one-stop shop job and employee search, interview and hiring.

The job fair, to be held on the eve of Ople’s 80th birthday, aims to increase the awareness of participants on the significance of Ople’s role in shaping the country’s labor and employment history and perpetuate in the nation’s consciousness his positive deeds and long lasting contributions to national development; enlist support and generate financial resources for the Blas F. Ople Journalism Scholarship Program administered by the Ople Policy Center and Training Institute and the Samahang Plaridel; and help contribute to national employment generation.

The Center is working closely with the Department of Labor and Employment — National Capital Region, Public Employment Service Office — Taguig, and the Taguig City Government to disseminate information and promote wide public participation in the job fair which is being organized by Susan Ople, president of the Ople Policy Center.

Many small businesses and sole proprietorships are growing their businesses with outsourcing more and more today. By outsourcing part of their work load they can free up time, keep costs down and take on more business for more income. When these one man operations or small businesses hire outside professionals to take on part of their work load this is referred to as outsourcing, since these people are not employees of the business that has the work to be done. By outsourcing the small company also appears to be much larger than they really are and they can make the profits of much larger companies this way.

Employees or perspective employees will be one of the biggest time savings as well as cost savings. No time will be spent setting up interviews or doing those interviews. This will allow you to spend more time with your customers, and any customer that deals directly with the owner will become loyal much quicker and will be a repeat customer longer.

Since you will not be hiring any employees there will be no tax forms to fill out, no scheduling to be done for them, and no need for training time. All of these things take your time and cost you money. Your business will also save by not having to buy employee health insurance, unemployment insurance, workers compensation insurance, and security systems to monitor these employees. This is in addition to saving on having no employee payroll, including your share of their income taxes, vacation pay, and holiday pay.

With the time that you save by not taking on employees, you can use that time for concentrating on your marketing and advertising campaigns, and the development of new products. Of course there are going to be costs associated with the outsourcing, however if you negotiate for a fair fee then your savings will outweigh these costs.

By outsourcing your company will grow in revenue but there will be no need for larger office space or work areas. Again your business will incur savings here also.

Without increasing your staff or work space there also will not be a need to buy and learn how to use more office equipment, production equipment, software, and other time consuming tasks related with larger space and new business tools.

Outsourcing will allow you to take on much larger orders that you could not take on by yourself. This will create the opportunity to branch out and expand your market area. Offer to take on the work that your competition can not handle.

The subcontracting companies that you do business with could become a source of new business as well since they will undoubtedly be talking to people about your business which brings them more business as well. In return you could act as a middleman for the subcontractors that you use by promoting their products in your business activities. For doing this for them you would charge them a finders fee which could be an added source of income for you or when you need to have them do work for you the money you receive from them could be used to offset their cost to you for the work they do for you.

Utilizing outsourcing will mean that your product will be turned out quicker therefore it will also be delivered quicker, which will boost customer satisfaction. The increase in customer satisfaction will multiply your profits quickly in the form of repeat business and referrals from those happy customers to their family, friends, and even strangers they may meet in their daily routine.

In conclusion any business can benefit from outsourcing in these ways provided that they locate and negotiate with an outside business that is prepared to meet the needs and has the knowledge and staff to produce the product sufficiently and economically. This outsourcing allows the small business to compete on a more even level with much larger companies as well as providing revenue growth and profit growth without increasing all the costs associated with growth.

July 11 (7/11) is the official birthday of the 7-Eleven® convenience store chain.

In 1927, convenience retailing began simply enough when an employee of Southland Ice Company in Dallas started selling milk, eggs and bread from the ice dock. Soon, the convenience store was born and became known as 7-Eleven to reflect the 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. hours of operation.

With approximately 7,100 stores in North America and more than 30,000 stores worldwide, 7-Eleven is the largest convenience retailer in the world.

7-Eleven was the first to … operate 24 hours a day … sell fresh-brewed coffee in to-go cups ... have a self-serve soda fountain … and offer super-size drinks.

In a four-week period, customers visit a 7-Eleven store an average of 17 times, 80 percent of their total trips to any convenience store.
Nearly one-third of the 6 million people who stop by a 7-Eleven store each day purchase immediately consumable food.

7-Eleven is America’s favorite beverage destination. More than half the customers each day purchase a non-alcoholic beverage.

A typical 7-Eleven store is between 2,400 and 3,000 square feet, and carries about 2,500 different items.

Who? What? Where? Who’s buying the most 7-Eleven stuff? The answer is – the most Slurpee® beverages in the world are purchased in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada; and for the United States, it’s Detroit; hot dogs in Washington, D.C., coffee on Long Island, nachos in Colorado, Big Gulp® drinks in Las Vegas and Utah. California has more 7-Eleven stores than any other state – close to 1,200.

Of all its proprietary products, 7-Eleven sells more fresh-brewed coffee than anything else – more than 1 million cups each day. That’s more than 10,000 pots of coffee an hour every hour of every day of the year. In fact, 7-Eleven could serve a cup of coffee to every person in its hometown of Dallas every single day – now that’s a Texas-sized coffee break!

7-Eleven sells close to 100 million fresh-grilled hot dogs every year, more than any other retailer in America, and could feed every person in hot dog-loving Chicago a Big Bite® hot dog each day for a month.

7-Eleven was the first retailer to offer fresh-brewed coffee in to-go cups, introducing it in their Northeast stores in 1964.

Beverages – biggest & best: 7-Eleven was the first retailer to introduce self-serve fountain drinks. When the 32-ounce Big Gulp® was introduced in 1980, it was the biggest cup on the market. In 1988, 7-Eleven introduced the giant 64-ounce Double Gulp®, the biggest soft drink on the market.

Last year 7-Eleven stores sold almost 33 million gallons of fountain drinks – enough to fill 75 Olympic-size swimming pools.
7-Eleven customers sip and slurp 11.6 million Slurpee® beverages each month. Favorite flavors are Coca-Cola and Minute Maid Cherry. Since its introduction in 1966, close to 6 billion Slurpee® drinks have been sold, just about enough for every person on the planet to have slurped.

7-Eleven sells 60 million fresh-baked donuts and pastries per year – enough to feed every person in the state of Virginia a dozen donuts!

If you lined up all the World Ovens® bakery items made for 7-Eleven in a year, they would extend almost 6,000 miles – from Boston to San Diego … and back again.

How sweet it is! 7-Eleven uses 365,000 pounds of glaze each month on its donuts, fritters and other pastries.

Most customers want a beverage with their favorite donut – 70 percent choose a cup of 7-Eleven coffee.

Blueberry is at the top of the hill as the best-selling World Ovens® muffin across the country. World Ovens Bakery is 7-Eleven stores’ proprietary line of fresh-baked items.

7-Eleven sells 41 million gallons of milk each year – enough for lots of milk mustaches! And enough to pour more than two glasses of milk for every man, woman and child in the United States.

Philippines News Search

Boracay Philippines Links Directory

Manila Philippines Search Directory

Philippines Job Search

In the Philippines, Chevron markets a range of petroleum products under the Caltex brand name and operates a finished-products import terminal; oil-blending, grease-manufacturing and LPG plants; a network of 838 Caltex-branded service stations; and more than 85 Star Mart® retail outlets and 43 Xpress Lube® outlets.

Trade Secretary Peter Favila said that the Philippines is not lacking in work. Unemployed Filipinos are just choosy. He cited applicants in call centers who supposedly back out after learning that they would have to start from graveyard shifts. But many call center agents are actually graduates of courses like engineering, computer science, nursing, pre-law, psychology and others – who got into this line of work because they could find no other jobs.

BY ALEXANDER MARTIN REMOLLINO
Bulatlat

Tom (not his real name), 27, has applied in four call center companies since November. The response of call centers, he told Bulatlat in an interview in Filipino, has been the same: “Wait for our call.” But there were no calls.

One of the call centers he applied at, says Tom, required skills not only in English proficiency but also in typing, data encoding, and written composition. But all companies, he said, place a prime on English proficiency. Interviews, he added, were conducted entirely in English.

A former trainer for call center applicants said that it merely takes a seven-minute interview for a company to determine whether to accept or reject an applicant. This is not an exaggeration, Tom said. “There was one instance when I spent more time waiting for the interviewer than the interview itself,” he said.

Tom lives with his mother and brother in a rented room in Sampaloc, Manila. He went to public schools for his grade school and high school education. For college he studied in a private non-sectarian school as a scholar. When he lost his scholarship, he transferred to another school and took up only the number of units that his mother could afford – which was always less than the regular load. He was not able to complete his course because of financial difficulties.

His mother, a secretary at a motor-bearing shop, is the sole breadwinner. His brother, a journalism graduate from a state university in 2004, worked as a contractual employee in a library and later on as clerk in a company. He is currently jobless. Tom’s father died when he was in grade school.

Asked how he assesses himself in terms of English-speaking skills, Tom says he is not able to sustain a conversation in English.

Good pay, relatively

The reason he has been struggling mightily to get into call centers, Tom said, is the relatively high starting pay that these companies offer.

Call centers usually pay their agents P13,000 ($254.27 based on a $1:P51.125 exchange rate) a month, industry insiders say. This translates to P433.33 ($8.47) a day.

Based on data from the National Wages and Productivity Commission (NWPC), the national average family living wage for a six-member family – the average Filipino family – is P657.13 ($12.85) as of February 2006. Conversely, the daily minimum wage is presently pegged at a national average of P237.56 ($4.64) as of March 2006, with the highest being that in the National Capital Region (NCR) which stands at P325 ($6.35), NWPC data further show.

Because of the relatively high salaries that agents in call centers get, these companies are widely perceived in the Philippines as the gateways to gainful employment. And the government encourages this view, portraying the call center as a sort of Mecca for college graduates, and even undergraduates in need of jobs.

Not that rosy

But the real picture is not quite as rosy. Data recently released to media by the John F. Kennedy Center Foundation-Philippines, which designs training programs for call centers in the Philippines and seeks to “revolutionize” the Philippine call center industry by “establishing centers of excellence,” show that only 11,526 applicants on the average are hired as call center agents in the country yearly. This is equivalent to only about 2 percent of all applicants annually, the data further show.

“Most fail because they fail to understand the requirement of global job interviews, testing and process,” Jim Santiago, president and chief executive officer of the John F. Kennedy Center Foundation-Philippines, told media in a recent interview. “Secondly, the spoken English becomes a challenge, in terms of conversational fluency, tone and accent.”

In a separate interview, Karl Mark (not his real name), who has been working in a call center since 2003, said that those who get accepted to work as call center agents tend to come from the middle to upper strata of the middle classes. They usually come from expensive private schools known for their good English training – most notably the Ateneo de Manila University, De La Salle University and other similar schools which cater to the more affluent classes. A student in Ateneo will spend around P100, 000 ($1,955) per year. De La Salle charges from P42, 000-P53, 000 ($821-$1036) each semester or around P120, 000 – P159, 000 ($2347-$3110) for a trimester. These schools are inaccessible to the ordinary Filipino.

Karl Mark confirmed that call centers indeed place a premium on oral English proficiency.

This was especially true, he says, in the earlier years of the call center industry in the Philippines. Call centers began operating in the Philippines in 2000, he says. “During those days they had really high standards for accepting applicants,” he says. “You had to be a college graduate and fluent in spoken English, otherwise they wouldn’t take you in.”

While the requirements have been eased somewhat, owing to the increasing needs of call centers, applicants who are good English speakers still have the advantage. They now accept college undergraduates – something Tom has been banking on in his hope to get in – but the stress on oral English skills is still there.

Most call centers now accept applicants who speak with heavy accents but with the correct grammar. But they have to undergo 80-hour training in American accent and culture, Karl Mark says.

In most call centers, newly-hired employees undergoing training are not paid, he further discloses. Only the large call centers like Convergys, Sykes, and and E-Telecare pay trainees, he says.

Good English speakers, mostly coming from expensive private schools, still have the edge as they usually do not have to go through the lengthy training, he added – they make money right away.

Underpaid too

Call center agents receive relatively high pay compared to rank and file employees and workers of most companies. But these are inadequate if one has a family or is not living with their parents. Karl Mark says. “Many of my officemates and even my friends who work in other call centers have been asking for wage increases,” he says. “They find it increasingly difficult to cope with inflation and additional taxes.”

In a March 30 statement, Prestoline Suyat, spokesperson of the Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU or May 1st Movement), said call center agents in the Philippines earn way below what their counterparts in the U.S. get.

“The minimum wage in the U.S. is $4 an hour,” Suyat told Bulatlat in a follow-up interview. “That is equivalent to roughly P40, 000 ($782) a month, which means call center agents in the U.S. could actually be earning more than that.”

“Many call center agents are actually graduates of courses like engineering, computer science, nursing, pre-law, psychology and other – who got into this line of work because they could find no other jobs,” he says. “Their potentials are not maximized because their work is focused on customer service, which is not what most of them studied during their four or five years in college.”

Verbal abuse is also staple fare for them, he admits. “Everyday you have to talk to foreigners who think nothing of hurling invectives at you for what they perceive as poor service,” he explains.

“The best” at present

“It is sad that the best our government can offer right now are jobs at call centers,” he

added.

Despite all these, Tom still hopes to get a shot at a call center job. “That still turns out to be the best option right now for people like me,” he says. “I hope I get hired soon.”

When people have problems understanding their computers, especially in the United States, they often pick up a phone and call the computer maker's help desk. Also, calls for help go out from Canada and the United Kingdom for many services. Increasingly, that help desk may be in the Philippines, a growing player in the outsourcing market. More companies from high cost labor markets are shifting call center jobs to the Philippines.

In the Philippines the outsourcing business has exploded. Just five years ago it accounted for only a few thousand jobs, but by the end of this year, about 266,000 people are expected to be working in the sector.

Two thirds of those jobs will be in call centers - taking calls from customers needing technical help. The rest are in companies handling such work as medical and legal transcription, record management, animation and accounting.

And the growth is just beginning. According to the Business Processing Association in the Philippines, the industry is expected to hit nearly one-point-one million jobs in four years. English language has a lot to do with that. The Philippines, a former American protectorate, is heavily English speaking, making it a natural choice for serving the U.S. market.

Mitch Locsin is executive director of the association, and says that 90 percent of the business-process outsourcing done in the Philippines is for the United States.

"We are very U.S.-centric," he says. "We have the same legal system, we have the same general accepted accounting principles as the U.S., we have a very good neutral accent. And of course it's because the strong affinity we have with the U.S."

One example of a U.S. business using the Philippines is the computer giant Dell. By mid-year it employed about 700 people at a customer service call center, handling questions on how to fix problems with computers. Dell hopes to double that to 1400 workers by February. Mike Garrison manages Dell's Philippine business.

"We're finding great talent in the Philippines," he says. "We look for three basic things. One is communication skills, the second is customer service skills, and the third is problem-solving skills. These are fundamentally problem-solving jobs where people are getting to the root of an issue. And on all three of those counts we're finding great talent here in the Philippines."

Among other companies that have customer service call centers in the Philippines are AOL, Sony and JVC. Customer satisfaction surveys and reservations for airlines are also handled in the Philippines.

Craig Rodger, the sales director of Customer Interactive Solutions for Dimension Data, based in South Africa, recently took part in a business conference on call centers in Manila.

He says that the quality of service offered by call centers here and worldwide has improved greatly over the past few years, with both companies and their customers increasingly satisfied.

"If you had asked the question five years ago, all the offshore destinations would have taken an absolute pasting and hammering," he notes. "And as organizations have learned to work better and those destinations have matured, satisfaction has improved dramatically, significantly. In many cases a lot of contracts awarded to destinations like the Philippines are as good as what they are achieving in satisfaction scores inside the U.S."

Industry officials say call center jobs are popular with young people in the Philippines because they pay relatively well. A starting call center worker gets about 15 thousand pesos a month, or $300. Equivalent start-up jobs in industries such banking or hospitality are about half that.

The industry is seen as key to the Philippine government's efforts to cut unemployment and boost the economy. For years, the government has encouraged workers to leave the country to work overseas to westernized locations, such as the European Union, as either unskilled laborers or as educated workers in fields such as nursing, engineering and aviation mechanics. Often, a teacher in the Philippines can double her salary by moving to Hong Kong to work as maid, earning about $475 a month.

Unlike many Asian countries, the Philippines has a relatively high unemployment rate - eight percent - and a high birth rate. Nearly half the population of 80 million is under the age of 21. Call centers and other outsourced office jobs thus have great appeal for communities in desperate need of jobs for young adults.

But one problem in the Philippines is getting enough qualified workers who speak good English. Although most Filipinos speak some English, many have heavy accents, or they have trouble understanding the accents of English speakers from other countries.

As recently as one year ago call centers hired only five out of every 100 applicants. But industry officials say that, thanks to government funded English proficiency courses, now as many as 15 applicants out of 100 are hired. Businessmen say many of those passed over before were just slightly under the qualification margin and 100 hours of intense English training can bring them up to speed.

Customer service is the primary way companies are differentiating themselves from competitors; and your call center is a customer’s primary touch point. At the 2nd Annual Call Center Summit, you’ll hear from more than 40 call center experts sharing first hand knowledge on how they are giving their organization competitive advantage through customer service excellence. Two tracks—one devoted to customer service and call center performance metrics, and the other devoted to call center technologies—give you advice and lessons learned on applying tools and strategies to help you obtain world-class call center status.

What are you doing to continually improve your call center operations and customer service delivery? Are you:

As you can see, there’s a lot to take advantage of at Call Center Summit. To help you get the most out of your experience at the conference, contact the Summit’s customer service specialist, Desmond Sullivan at 212-973-3302 to help you organize your week.

Doug Watson is an expert in Philippines business process outsourcing, an entrepreneur and an idea maniac. A geek from when he got his first computer, an incredible AMD 486DX2 with a 500MB Hard Drive. AOL here I come (and went)!Doug enjoys hardware and software technology, marketing, the interwebs, retail and online commerce. Visit My LinkedIn Profile